


Ouroboros

by Steerpike13713



Category: Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Assassins & Hitmen, Dark, Gen, Post-Scorpia, mention of child death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-07
Updated: 2012-05-07
Packaged: 2017-11-05 00:35:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/399949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steerpike13713/pseuds/Steerpike13713
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he returns to his hotel room, after the latest job is done, he doesn’t kick off his boots after he’s finished checking the place over, doesn't shave or wash his face or go through any of the half-a-hundred other little rituals he’s developed over the last twenty years. Instead, he lies on the bed with his boots still on, looking at the ceiling and thinking about the boy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ouroboros

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Beware](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/107181) by vballmania23. 



When he returns to his hotel room, after the latest job is done, he doesn’t kick off his boots after he’s finished checking the place over, doesn't shave or wash his face or go through any of the half-a-hundred other little rituals he’s developed over the last twenty years. Instead, he lies on the bed with his boots still on, looking at the ceiling and thinking about the boy.

He’d thought the last time would be the end of it, that Blunt would have learnt his lesson after his first experiment went so spectacularly wrong. He’d been wrong. He didn’t like killing children, on the whole. He’d lost his own innocence too young to like the thought of taking anyone else’s. But that was the nature of the job, that sometimes you did things you didn’t want to, and there was no-one really to blame.

He’d been a spirited kid, from what he’d seen. Young and impulsive, and not completely hollowed out yet. So much like his predecessor that it had almost hurt, of course, but he’d have expected that, if he’d thought about the possibility at all. Not physically, of course. If you’d put the two of them side-by-side you’d have had a hard time finding a single commonality between them, but that fire was the same as  _his_ had been, before life had snuffed it out. He didn’t think about _him_ if he could help it, the boy who had died slowly under Scorpia’s tender mercies, but it would have been impossible to do anything else at that moment. He hated killing children.

The job had been a miserable failure, mostly because of the boy, and that only made things worse. If the kid was that effective on his first run, they’d send him out again and again and again until he was dead or too broken to be of any further use to them. That was how MI6 dealt with their property, he’d learnt. They used you until you broke, and threw you aside like rubbish as soon as you did. He hoped it would be the former, this time. If there was one thing he hated more than killing children, it was what happened when you pushed them past that point. A bullet between the eyes would have been a better form of mercy than sending the boy back to Blunt to be used again, but it was too late now for regrets. What was done could not be undone.

In time, he rolls off the bed, shoulders the bathroom door open, shaves and washes and becomes whoever he needs to next. Maybe he’ll be a redhead this week, he certainly feels like raging. Wherever that boy is now, whatever he's doing, the sword hangs over his head by only the finest of threads. Maybe it won’t fall today, maybe not tomorrow, but it will happen, and he hopes to God he won’t be there when it does.

He doesn’t look at his face in the mirror. He knows too well what he will see. Fair hair, still tipped with black where the last lot of dye hadn't quite grown out yet, serious eyes, neutral expression, the same professional mask he’s worn for fifteen years and more. It had been a surprise, and not a pleasant one, the first time, when he’d looked in the mirror after a job and found Yassen Gregorovich looking back at him. Over time, the shock had grown less, until he barely noticed that the face in the mirror was not quite his own.

He changes quickly, without preamble, and checks himself for any sign, any flaw in the façade, before leaving. Sean Pierce, a thirty-year-old software developer from California, stares back at him, fair hair still slightly damp around a face which looks suddenly much younger, full of glib, insincere charm. His handlers at Scorpio had always marvelled at how completely he was able to adopt a new persona, immersing himself so completely it was impossible to tell where the façade ended and the man began. It is his greatest asset, now, that adaptability. The face that greets him when he checks himself in the mirror is neither his nor Yassen’s, and that is comforting. He doesn’t think he could face either one tonight.

He leaves the hotel in darkness, checking out in the early hours of the morning and stepping out into the Parisian night, the night air cool against his skin and a disassembled rifle tucked into the lining of his coat. Murmansk is waiting, and his latest employer with it. Not his favourite place in the world, but that was the nature of the job, and you went where it dictated.

Across the Channel, Alan Blunt sits in his office, a boy of fourteen sitting opposite him. He tells the boy that the man he encountered is more dangerous than anyone he has met before, that if he ever sees this man again, he must send out an alarm, and they will pull him out. It is a truth, or part of one; this is only the second time such an agent has been deployed, and it would not do to lose one so carefully groomed and conditioned to an assassin’s bullet just yet. He tells the boy that the man is a traitor to his country and to his government, and that he is one of the most dangerous assassins the world has ever seen. The boy nods and keeps quiet and doesn’t tell Blunt the last words the assassin spoke to him.

“Go back to school. Go back to your life. And the next time they ask you, say no. Killing is for adults and you're still a child.”

Alex Rider boarded his plane and hoped that, this time, the boy would listen.


End file.
